Such are the trifles which produce quarrels on shipboard.  In fact, we had been too long from port.  We were getting tired of one another, and were in an irritable state, both forward and aft.  Our fresh provisions were, of course, gone, and the captain had stopped our rice, so that we had nothing but salt beef and salt pork throughout the week, with the exception of a very small duff on Sunday.  This added to the discontent; and many little things, daily and almost hourly occurring, which no one who has not himself been on a long and tedious voyage can conceive of or properly appreciate,—­ little wars and rumors of wars, reports of things said in the cabin, misunderstanding of words and looks, apparent abuses,—­ brought us into a condition in which everything seemed to go wrong.  Every encroachment upon the time allowed for rest appeared unnecessary.  Every shifting of the studding-sails was only to ``haze’’[1] the crew.

In the midst of this state of things, my messmate Stimson and I petitioned the captain for leave to shift our berths from the steerage, where we had previously lived, into the forecastle.  This, to our delight, was granted, and we turned in to bunk and mess with the crew forward.  We now began to feel like sailors, which we never fully did when we were in the steerage.  While there, however useful and active you may be, you are but a mongrel,—­ a sort of afterguard and ``ship’s cousin.’’ You are immediately under the eye of the officers, cannot dance, sing, play, smoke, make a noise, or growl, or take any other sailor’s pleasure; and you live with the steward, who is usually a go-between; and the crew never feel as though you were one of them.  But if you live in the forecastle, you are ``as independent as a wood-sawyer’s clerk’’ (nautice), and are a sailor.  You hear sailors’ talk, learn their ways, their peculiarities of feeling as well as speaking and acting; and, moreover, pick up a great deal of curious and useful information in seamanship, ship’s customs, foreign countries, &c., from their long yarns and equally long disputes.  No man can be a sailor, or know what sailors are, unless he has lived in the forecastle with them,—­ turned in and out with them, and eaten from the common kid.  After I had been a week there, nothing would have tempted me to go back to my old berth, and never afterwards, even in the worst of weather, when in a close and leaking forecastle off Cape Horn, did I for a moment wish myself in the steerage.  Another thing which you learn better in the forecastle than you can anywhere else is, to make and mend clothes, and this is indispensable to sailors.  A large part of their watches below they spend at this work, and here I learned the art myself, which stood me in so good stead afterwards.